Plasma and electricity in space. Failure of gravity-only cosmology. Exposing the myths of dark matter, dark energy, black holes, neutron stars, and other mathematical constructs. The electric model of stars. Predictions and confirmations of the electric comet.

In their study, Gharib and his team experimented with both crystal plates of quartz and lithium niobate, each of which can induce the triboelectric effect—in which an electric charge builds up because of friction with another material. When the jet hits the crystal, the water creates a smooth, laminar flow of positively charged ions across the negatively charged surface. At the shear region, where the stream strikes the surface and flows outward across it, the triboelectric effect triggers a high flow of electrons through the water to its surface. This flow of electrons ionizes the atoms and molecules in the surrounding gas near the surface of the water, creating a donut, or torus, of glowing plasma that is dozens of microns in diameter and visible under a microscope.

The article says that the feature has "no known use." It might be worth recalling that when the laser was first invented it had no known use either. Now lasers are found everywhere, in devices as diverse as the checkout counter at your supermarket, to guidance systems for missiles, to surveying instruments, and many other applications.

This is why I spend time browsing around on forums like Thunderbolts; you find out about these random, out-of-the-blue, fascinating things.

I remember reading a couple or three years ago, where somebody was proposing that ball lightning might be some kind of toroidal plasma structure. I have no idea where I found that discussion; probably I saved away a link to it, and it's somewhere in among the chaos of hundreds of other links I've saved over years. But there were explanations of how a torus can be a self-stabilizing electromagnetic structure in open air, persistent over a long period of time.

It reminds me somehow, I have this little torch igniter gadget, which when you operate it out in still, open air, makes perfect little smoke rings every time.